Cities and problems multiply

In this new industrial order, the city was the nerve center. Within its borders were
focused all the dynamic economic forces: vast accumulations of capital, business and
financial institutions, spreading railroad yards, gaunt smoky factories, and armies
of manual and clerical workers. With populations recruited from the countryside and
from lands across the sea, villages grew into towns and towns sprang into cities
almost overnight. In 1830, only one of every fifteen persons lived in communities of
8,000 or over, in 1860 nearly one out of every six, in 1890 three out of ten. No
single city had as many as a million inhabitants in 1860, but thirty years later New
York had a million and a half, and Chicago and Philadelphia each had over a million.
In these three decades, Philadelphia and Baltimore doubled in population; Kansas City
and Detroit grew fourfold, Cleveland sixfold, Chicago tenfold. Minneapolis and Omaha
and many communities like them which were mere hamlets when the Civil War began,
increased fifty times or more in population.

Vital as were these developments, their implications were not sufficiently understood
to make a significant impact on the political life of the period. Although there was
an abundance of issues before the American people, one distinguished historian
has written, "between 1865 and 1897 there were put upon the federal law books not
more than two or three acts which need long detain the citizen concerned only with
those manifestations of political power that produce essential readjustments in
human relations."

Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected to the presidency in 1884. He alone of the
Presidents following the war had some understanding of the significance and direction
of the changes that were transforming the country and made some effort to grapple
with the problems resulting from them. In the question of railroads, for instance,
many abuses demanded readjustment. Particularly pernicious was discrimination in
rates against small shippers in the form of rebates to larger ones. In addition,
some railroads charged arbitrarily higher rates to some shippers than to others
between certain points, irrespective of distance. While competition held down freight
charges between cities having several rail connections, rates were excessive between
points served by but one line. As a result therefore, it cost less to ship goods
800 miles from Chicago to New York than to places a few hundred miles cast of Chicago.
Railroads also tried plans of joint action to avoid competition. By one of these
devices-pooling-rival companies divided the freight business according to a
prearranged scheme placing the total earnings in a common fund for distribution.
Popular resentment at these railroad practices deepened as time passed, and some
efforts at regulation were made by the states. Although these had some salutary
effect, the problem was, by its very nature, national in character and therefore
demanded Congressional action. The result was the Interstate Commerce Act, which
President Cleveland signed in 1887. This statute forbade excessive charges, pools,
rebates, and rate discrimination, and created an Interstate Commerce Commission to
guard against violations of the act and to regulate railroad charges and practices.

Cleveland was also an energetic champion of tariff reform. Adopted originally as an
emergency war measure, the high tariff had come to be accepted as permanent national
policy. Cleveland regarded this as unsound and responsible, in large measure, for a
burdensome increase in the cost of living and for the rapid development of trusts.
For years, the tariff had not even been a political issue. In 1880, however, the
Democrats had demanded a "tariff for revenue only," and soon the clamor for reform
became insistent. In his annual message in 1887, Cleveland, despite warnings to avoid
the explosive subject, startled the nation by denouncing the fantastic extremes to
which the principle of protecting American industry from foreign competition had been
pushed. This question became the issue of the next presidential election campaign,
and the Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, defending the concept of
protectionism, won. His administration set about fulfilling its campaign promises
by new legislation, and the McKinley tariff bill was passed in 1890. This measure
sought not only to protect established industries, but also to foster infant
industries and, by prohibitory duties, to create new ones. The generally high rates
prescribed by the new tariff were shortly reflected in high retail prices, and before
long there was widespread dissatisfaction.

During this period, public concern was increasingly directed at the trusts. Subjected
to bitter attack through the eighties by such reformers as Henry George and Edward
Bellamy, the gigantic corporations became not only an object of antagonism but also a
political issue. In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. Its primary intention
was to break the monopolies; it forbade all combinations in restraint of interstate
trade and provided several methods of enforce ment with severe penalties. The law
itself accomplished little immediately after its passage, for it was couched in
general and indefinite terms. A decade later, however, in the administration of
Theodore Roosevelt, its effective application earned the President the nickname of
"trust-buster."

Despite these significant trends, the political picture of the period from the end of
the Civil War until the turn of the century was, generally, a negative one. The
vitality of the American people in these years was concentrated elsewhere; its impact
was perhaps most clearly reflected in the history of the west. In 1865, the frontier
line followed generally the western limits of the states bordering the Mississippi
River, bulging outward to include the eastern sections of Kansas and Nebraska. Behind
this thin edge of pioneer farms was still much unoccupied land, and beyond that
stretched the unfenced prairies, merging finally in the sagebrush plains that
extended to the foothills of the Rockies. Then, for nearly a thousand miles loomed
the huge bulk of mountain ranges, many richly stored with silver, gold, and other
metals. On the Pacific side, new plains and deserts stretched to the wooded coast
ranges and the ocean. Apart from the settled districts in California and scattered
outposts, the vast inland region was peopled only by Indians.